New hope in breast cancer fight

The Griffith Health Institute is exploring the use of immunotherapy to deal with cancer stem-like cells.

Doctor Trina Stewart says the cells have the potential to form new tumours and cause a recurrence of the disease.

"What I've been shown in pre-clinical models is that these cancer stem-like cells are particularly sensitive to certain forms of immunotherapy," she says.

"We can stimulate molecules on their surface that actually cause the cell to undergo cell death and apoptosis."

Dr Stewart says the body may hold the key to better treatment of breast cancer.

"We're trying to target these cells through immunotherapy an alternative therapy to radiation and chemotherapy where you use components of your own immune system to actually attack these cells," she says.

The therapies can be directly targeted to the cells.

"We can isolate certain parts of an immune response that we can then either manipulate to be better or we can take out and expand and then put back in for it to operate optimally," Dr Stewart says.